


Into the Woods

by strawberryberet



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Happy Ending, Historical Fantasy, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25389547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberryberet/pseuds/strawberryberet
Summary: After Donghyuck's magic is discovered, he has no choice but to flee the palace he once called home.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 84





	Into the Woods

The borrowed cloak is made of a thick wool, heavy on the shoulders but necessary when traversing the mountainous geography past the royal palace. Not many come this way, due to the paths cutting through forests and jagged terrain that makes it impassable to horses and carriages. All journeys here are made on foot. 

Donghyuck draws the cloak tighter over himself, his bare fingers numb from the cold and his teeth beginning to chatter— despite having lived here in the north for half of his life, he doesn’t think he could have ever gotten used to these winters. 

He’s skirted the mountain nearest to the palace, and has now found himself in a lonely forest blanketed with fog in the dead of night. It will be a long walk to the harbor town where he hopes to catch the next ship out to the archipelago nation to the south. A wolf howls somewhere in the distance, and he stops at the base of an impossibly tall, wide oak tree, blinking up through the fog at its tangle of branches above. 

There is no one around here, not this far from the village, farther still from the palace, and so he nurses a flame in his palms, allowing it to warm his numbed fingers and icy skin. Out here, no one will scream treason at a boy with magic in his hands. 

Had it not been for the palace baker’s urgent warning, Doyoung pressing a hastily wrapped bundle of bread into his arms with a hushed, _They know. I don’t know how they found out, but they are going to have you killed,_ Donghyuck doesn’t know what may have happened to him. All he knows now is that he needs to get as far away as possible from the kingdom he had once called home. 

Without much time at all to devise a plan of action, Donghyuck had settled for the one option he could think of, no matter how impossible the journey may have seemed when he set out. His gut had wrenched thinking of early mornings in his bedroom, a dimpled smile telling him of a friend in the south, a jeweler by the name of Youngho. 

_One day I’ll take you to visit_ had been the promise whispered to him that morning.

And yet Donghyuck is here, trudging through the snow with only a magic flame to keep himself warm, and just the one set of footprints trailing behind him. To have magic in one’s blood is to walk a lonely path, but Donghyuck has never had any other choice. 

He just wishes that perhaps the illusion could have remained just a little longer. He would take even one more day. 

By the time the sky has darkened to an inky black and the snowfall has worsened to the point that Donghyuck can hardly see past the trees in front of him, he realizes that he may not even have one more day left at all.

Someone is following him.

He can hear their footsteps crunching in the snow behind him, can feel the haunting presence of another human being in these lonely woods with him. There are no other travelers out this way during weather like this, especially not at night. This is someone who has come for him. 

They came for him, but despite their many chances to strike him down, with his back turned and so far away from the palace that they wouldn’t even have to dispose of his corpse, they haven’t laid a finger on him. 

“Why does it have to be you?” Donghyuck murmurs, not turning. If he turns, then he has to acknowledge what he has been hoping this entire journey would not be the case. Who else would show such hesitation?

“I ask myself the same question,” comes the pained response.

Willpower is something that Donghyuck has always lacked, and the ache inside him is enough to at last force him to turn, to face his executioner. He extinguishes the flame in his hands as he does, inviting the cold to pierce through his cloak. It is a more biting chill, this time.

“You brought the royal sword.”

Jaehyun nods, the wind whisking his dark hair in every direction, his cloak billowing out behind him as he grips the glistening sword in his gloved hands. With his carefully tailored uniform buttoned up to his throat and the silver insignia of the royal family glinting at his breast pocket, he looks the very picture of a royal knight, the same kind who appear in storybooks for children, the same kind who have statues erected in their honor.

Even in his moment of demise, Donghyuck is proud of him.

“It is the only blade in the kingdom that can seal magic away,” Jaehyun says. “You remember why?”

“Because it is said to be blessed by the Divines,” Donghyuck replies, reciting the words with much more ease now. He remembers stumbling over texts, unable to make sense of the legends that had never been shared with the common folk. He remembers the candle flickering on the desk, Jaehyun watching him with a slowly widening smile as he got closer and closer to finishing a sentence without getting stuck on a word or two. 

That was then, in a comfortable room in the palace, Donghyuck’s magic simmering in his blood but otherwise contained, cheeks warming from something other than the gentle heat of the candlelight, naivete tricking him into thinking he couldn’t possibly be found out.

This is now, with a bounty on Donghyuck’s head and a sword in Jaehyun’s hands, the icy winds biting their cheeks red and raw instead. 

“So it was true. You have magic.”

“Yes. Whatever they say of me back at the palace, it’s true. A mage has been healing your sick for years.”

“You never told me you had magic.”

Donghyuck blinks. “Does it matter? You know now.”

“You told me you had no secrets left to tell,” Jaehyun continues, and Donghyuck doesn’t know why he is insisting on playing this game here in the freezing forest, toying with him in the last few moments of his life. “I told you everything about myself. I bared my heart to you, Donghyuck.”

“Your secrets weren’t treasonous, Ser Knight,” Donghyuck replies with a patronizing edge, shaking his head. “Now will you please just cut me down already? I would much rather die by your hand than the night chill.” 

“I…”

_“Please.”_

There is a silence stretching between them that is punctuated only by the howling of the winds around them, Jaehyun’s expression wrought with pain. 

“...Lee Donghyuck, you stand before the goddess accused of treason,” Jaehyun finally begins, and Donghyuck has heard this speech before, echoed in the throne room during executions. It was always meant to end this way, wasn’t it? With Donghyuck hearing these words. “For concealing magic from the royal family while under their employ and evading arrest, your punishment is death by divine royal blade.”

Here they come, then. His last moments. Death’s looming form wrapping its cold arms around his shivering frame is making him foolish; he stands in the snow facing the man who is about to kill him and finds himself grateful to be able to see his face, to hear his voice. It feels like both one final mercy and a curse that will follow him beyond his grave.

The sword drops to the ground, sinking into the snow. 

Donghyuck’s eyes widen, fixated on the imprint that already is beginning to fade beneath the wind-swept flakes. 

“I was sent here to kill you,” Jaehyun says, “but this is a royal order I cannot carry out.” 

Has he died already? Is this a trick, the lord of the dead simply toying with him? But the snow still melts on his skin, the wind still bites at his cheeks, the woolen cloak still hangs heavy on his shoulders. 

“Why?” is all he asks, his voice so quiet in the howling wind.

Jaehyun shakes his head, his expression gentle, pleading. He approaches Donghyuck slowly as the sword becomes lost to the piles of snow. “After all this time, surely you must know how I feel about you.”

“You care for me enough to commit treason? Jaehyun, you are a royal knight. That has been your dream since you were seven years old.”

Jaehyun smiles, impossibly fond. “You _were_ listening.”

“Of course I was,” Donghyuck says, frustrated. 

“And that is why I will choose you every time, Donghyuck. I could be the king himself, and still, I would end up here in these woods with you.”

“I am a mage. A fugitive mage with a death sentence. I—”

“You are my person,” Jaehyun interrupts, close enough now that Donghyuck feels warmth like the fire he’d summoned in his palms. “That is what I have always tried to tell you. The circumstances don’t matter, as long as I am beside you.”

Emotion like Donghyuck hasn’t felt in a while surges through him, sparks at the magic in his blood, melts the snow around their feet with a warm pink glow. Jaehyun watches the soft glimmers of magic fade away with a wonder in his eyes— _wonder,_ not fear. Not repulsion.

“You realize this means we are both fugitives now,” Donghyuck says, still unable to believe what is happening. 

“I know. I knew exactly what I was doing the moment I left the palace.”

“We can never return home, Jaehyun.”

“That doesn’t matter to me.”

Donghyuck stares at him, and Jaehyun stares back. Then he turns, exhales in a puff of icy vapor, and finally, _finally_ allows his magic to flow from his fingertips freely, melting the snow around them and bathing the area in a glow that could only have come from someone like him. It never made sense to him how something so beautiful could be so feared and hated by the others in the kingdom, but none of that matters now.

Not when Jaehyun is standing there looking at him like he’d strung up the moon and stars himself. 

“Tomorrow morning, you can finally show me the southern islands,” Donghyuck says, as Jaehyun gently takes his hands in his own, tracing the lines of his palms as if in a reverent trance. “It’s not home, but…”

“It will be,” Jaehyun says. “As long as you’re here, anywhere can be home.”

⋆✲* ☾*✲⋆

_“If you weren’t a knight, what would you be doing now?” Donghyuck asks. The sun is setting over the hills, taking with it what little warmth had lingered in the evening autumn air. Donghyuck can’t tell, though, not wrapped up in Jaehyun’s cloak standing on the balcony of the western tower of the royal palace._

_Jaehyun is quiet for a moment, his gaze turning to Donghyuck’s._

_“What? Why are you staring at me?”_

_“I just can’t think of another place I would rather be than here,” he says._

_Donghyuck scoffs. “Please. You know I love flattery, but I want an honest answer.”_

_“Okay,” Jaehyun hums. “Maybe I would open a bakery. Somewhere warmer than here, maybe in the south? As for what I’d be doing right now, it’s late, you know, the shop would be closed. I think I’d be in our bedroom, or—”_

_“‘Our,’” Donghyuck repeats, blinking slowly, his lips parted. “You said ‘our.’”_

_“Of course I did. What use is there picturing a future without you in it?”_

_“You are too skilled at flattering me,” Donghyuck shakes his head. “I don’t believe a word you say, Ser Knight.”_

_Jaehyun smiles. “You don’t need to. Somehow, I’ll find a way to prove it to you.”_

_Donghyuck worries his emotions will cause magic to burst from him, so he says nothing and simply chases the warmth of that smile as the last rays of the sun disappear behind the horizon, leaving them but a tangled shadow on the balcony._

_His magic feels like a ticking time bomb on most days, but out here wrapped up in the arms of this man who loves him, he can allow himself to believe that this will last forever._

⋆✲* ☾*✲⋆

What feels like a million miles and a lifetime away, Donghyuck lies on the southern beach with the surf at his toes and the sun warming his tanned cheeks. Beside him, Jaehyun has their fingers intertwined in the sand.

A different kind of magic thrums in his chest.


End file.
